Zartis tech consultancy set for revenues of almost €20m this year
Founded in 2009, Zartis has seen its turnover rise significantly in the last half-decade as it has scaled in Ireland and around the world
Zartis, an Irish outsourced tech consultancy, is on track to report revenues of nearly €20 million this year, according to its chief executive.
Padraig Coffey, who has led the company since 2017, said turnover has increased significantly in the last five years as the company has scaled in Ireland and around the world.
“We now provide software development services to clients in North America, the UK, Ireland, the Nordics and Germany,” he said.
“There’s been substantial growth every year over the last few years, and we’ve been growing revenue and profitability at the same time.”
Zartis, which has backing from Enterprise Ireland, now employs 270 people around the world, with staff in Ireland, Germany, Spain and Portugal. It was founded in 2009 by John Dennehy, a Cork entrepreneur, who left the business in 2017. Since then, Coffey and other members of Zartis’s leadership team have executed a management buyout.
“John set an outstanding platform for the company, and in 2017 he decided he wanted to do other things,” Coffey said. “The leadership team that had grown around him was keen to try to scale the business.”
Zartis provides clients with engineers who integrate with in-house departments to help them with their technological issues, as well as offering outsourced services in strategy, infrastructure and design.
It is operating in a crowded space, but has executed consistent growth due to a combination of a strong culture and an emphasis on social initiatives, Coffey said.
“We launched an initiative in 2018, called Level Up, which connects refugees and asylum seekers with training opportunities in the tech industry. We’ve been able to help more than 100 people, many of whom were in direct provision centres, as well as refugees around Europe,” he said.
“It’s very competitive in tech and it can be hard to keep people, and in our business we live and die by the quality of the people we have. So pushing a lot of effort towards these sorts of social impact initiatives has been a powerful driver of the success of the company, because when you’re doing good things, people will want to work with you, both clients and employees.”
Zartis counts Irish tech unicorn ESW, formerly EShopWorld, among its client list, as well as Fexco, the Kerry-based financial services company. Internationally, the company works with Kaplan, a US education giant which employs more than 12,000 people.
In the coming years, it is aiming to keep scaling up its operations, both in terms of revenue and profitability, as well as continuing to grow internationally.
“We’re looking to set up a new engineering hub in the coming years, and that’s something we want to invest in to get up and running,” Coffey said.
Beyond that, the sky is the limit for the Cork-based firm, Coffey said. “The goal that we as a leadership team at Zartis have set is to build the best company any of us have ever worked for. And that’s an open-ended goal, and it’s a daily challenge that we’re always striving towards.”
This Making it Work article is produced in partnership with Enterprise Ireland
